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Animation Layers for Maya

Software: Autodesk Maya

Author: Marc-Andre Guindon

About

Marc-Andre Guindon has been in the industry since the inception of Autodesk Maya in 1997. Marc-Andre is the founder of NeoReel Inc. and his talent sees him involved in a variety of projects, including games, film, and the creation of tools and solutions to speed the workflow pipeline.

Introduction

Whether you are an animator or a technical director, you may have encountered situations where you needed to modify an already existing animation. Modifying existing animations can save time, but it might require tweaking lots of keyframes. We think it can be much simpler with Animation Layers.

For no apparent reason, most animation software except Maya features some sort of animation layers. Of course, Maya has Trax, which features some non-linear and layered animation, but you might find it hard to use just like me!

The solution to this issue is to be able to isolate keyframes in their own layer, which can be easily turned On or Off. Once the desired animation is reached, you can merge the layers together and come back to an ordinary animation in Maya.

Perhaps the best application of animation layer is when dealing with motion capture or complex animation. Mocap usually has several keys per frame for every node in the character. This clutters the Time Slider and Graph Editor and it is virtually impossible to apply an overall modification without screwing up the animation or adding animation overrides. If this example sounds somewhat familiar, then this tutorial is for you!

Installation

The Animation Layers for Maya feature is freely accessible through a web based software named NeoReel Online MEL Script Library. As the name implies, this MEL script library connects on the web to get you the latest version of desired scripts.

The following shows how to install the Animation Layers for Maya.

Download

The online library makes use of a Maya plug-in (~42k), which gives you access to the library. So in order to get going, you must first download the plug-in.

Loading the script

When loading for the first time, a configuration window will be displayed. Simply expand a category and check any checkboxes to load the wanted scripts or click the Specifications to learn about what it does.

Note: You will require internet access to load any scripts for the first time or to gain access to newer versions.

# Expand the Animation section.

# Turn On the checkbox for the nrLayers script.

# When Maya notifies you that a MEL command is to be executed, click the Allow or Allow All button.

Congratulations! You now have access to the Animation Layers for Maya through the Layers Editor.

The Anim option in the Layer Editor

Note: If you need to configure the plug-in again, you can either type ¡°neoreelLibrary ¨Cconfig¡° in the Script Editor, or load the nrToolbox script found in the Utilities section which creates a menu in the main menu bar.

Using the animation layers

OK, so you got all the way here to use this great tool that's gonna blow your mind. Well, you will now experiment the various features accessible in the tool.

Animate an object

# Create a sphere.

# Set two keyframes at frame 1 and 24 so the sphere moves from side to side in the view.

Add a layer

Keyframe new animation

Before setting keyframes, you must understand how the final animation will be computed. Basically, the engine adds up the value of all the animation layers to the base layer. If you set a value on a layer, then the effect is computed for the entire animation. In order to localize your modifications, you must set what are call zero keyframes. Those keyframes usually surrounds the area to be modified.

Delete an animation layer

Note: Animation layers are global in the scene and not linked to the selected object. If you delete an animation layer, it will delete the animation for that layer on all objects.

Side notes

Following are some features/issues reported with the animation layers.

Characters

If your scene contains character sets, the anim layer engine was built to support them. Simply select your current character set just as you would normally do, then keyframes like you would normally do.

Portablility

If you need to open a scene file with animation layers on a machine without the animation layer script, you will be able to playback the animation just fine, but you will not be able to modify the layers individually. Bake the object's animation to fix this. But know that the animation will be the same on a machine with or without the animation layer script.

Set Driven Keys display

Because of the implementation of the animation layers, set driven keys will not be displayed normally in the Graph Editor. To fix this, temporarily unload the nrLayer script.

Anim Layer names

The names you set on animation layer nodes in the Layer Editor will not be saved with the scene file at this time.

Refresh problem

On rare occasions, users have experienced a refresh problem in the Time Slider when creating a new anim layer. To fix this, simply highlight the animation layer again.

Feedback

Please, make sure to post comments, requests or problems on the NeoReel Online MEL Library forum at the following link: